This Time and Every Time It"s Personal

In case you hadn't noticed this blog is my entirely personal and eclectic view of the world. Organisations I belong to disown me and every word of this thing - long before the cock crows. I blog what I want and I blogit when when I want. I rarely delete comments and will generally carry corrections and observations prominently on request. This time, and every time ... it's personal.

The extremely acute of hearing may be able to pick up the exact nature of the parliamentary banter distracting Master Leech from his rubbish question. Much of this of course is jeering at his in-bred Libdemologist wish for a nice fence to sit on. But there is also an element calling Leech for his inexcusable Christie Hospital Closure Hoax.

As this speaker suggests, as he tries to save the hoaxer from the mob, this is getting a bit old now.

So Labour of Love must respectfully suggest that as well as bringing his expertise to the platform, instead of skulking with the naughty boys at the back, to debate with Labour PPC Lucy Powell, Green PPC Brian Candeland, not to mention the doggéd Hizb_ut-Tahrir associate and Tory Faraz Bhatti, on the matter of Greening Manchester's Transport ... and he HAS CONFIRMED ATTENDANCE but still REFUSES TO PARTICIPATE ... he MUST also keep his promise to debate his Christie Closure Hoax - that he still protests was valid - with cancer patients, health professionals, and Lucy Powell.

Ms Powell received rapturous applause at a health meeting at the Bournemouth conference attended by health secretary Alan Johnson and 60 delegates as she turned on the Withington MP during her speech.It is the latest in a series of attacks by Labour members who have accused Mr Leech of whipping-up fears that the specialist cancer centre was under threat in the build-up to the 2005 General Election when he won the seat from Labour.Mr Leech has responded to the attack by laying down the gauntlet to Ms Powell saying he wants to resolve the issue 'once and for all'.He challenged Ms Powell to a public debate in the constituency.In her conference speech, Ms Powell said: "The Lib Dems' agenda is to create crisis and fear - not for ideological reasons, but for political gain."Like they did in my constituency at the last election."They claimed that the Christie Hospital was under threat of closure."Yet there was no prospect whatsoever of that happening."In fact it was the opposite - further investment, a new research facility, the expansion of cancer services - that's the reality today. And this was all in the pipeline during the election."To shamelessly play politics with the vulnerable and the unwell in the hope of gaining votes is the worst kind of politics."The only service in Manchester Withington that we are committed to ending at the next election is John Leech's time as an MP."

Here's Mr Leech's response in more detail:

After hearing of Ms Powell's comments, Mr Leech challenged her to a public showdown to address Labour claims over the Christie Hospital.He said: "I am ready to debate this issue with Lucy Powell."This issue comes up time and time again."It is an attempt at party political point-scoring."Labour sat on their hands when we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the 60 doctors who had serious concerns over the Christie's future. Those concerns are a matter of public record.[...lies, lies, lies, more Leech cheap point scoring lies excised...]"I will be more than happy to debate the issue with her."

But not it seems the immediate issue of the Transport Innovation Fund and £1.5 Billion, yes Billion, of investment.

This should work with the relevant gid for the Abbott speech. I just followed instructions as far as I can remember. I do sometimes hack into things a bit and improvise but not as far as I can remember in this case.

Diane's speech is surely to be found at YouTube though? Strangely not. Btw I know what you're saying and why but that pre-trial detention chart is pretty hokey you know? Most of these countries have ways and means to achieve longer incarceration than appears from this histogram.

I have stuck the Abbott speech up as a test. The bug in the They Work For You code is that [/embed] needs to be added. html instructions or arguments is it (legalese) always need to open and close. Angle brackets of course.

Hi Paul - many thanks for this. Yes they do use it but getting them to comment is tricky! We do have one debate about stop and search with 28 comments and another ongoing one about euthanasia though. I'm trying to encourage them but none of them even know what RSS is...

Ta for the accurate observation for the pre-trial chart. More a way of trying to provoke a debate than anything though!

I'm really glad to see the video from theyworkforyou.com being used in this blog. As one of the co-creators of the service that provides the embedded video I would like to comment on a few things that Chris said in the original blog posting.

"Not quite sure how long each of these will survive intact."

Of the five audio and video sources that Chris linked to in this blog posting (four external, plus the embedded video) only two are still available online - the youtube video and the embedded video from theyworkforyou.com/video .

About an hour ago, the youtube user "ukparl" added this comment (http://uk.youtube.com/user/ukparl):

"We have been recently advised by the Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting to stop reproducing and rebroadcasting PMQ videos unless we officially pursuing the license from PARBUL (Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Limited).

We would like to bid farewell to all our subscribers. This channel will be shut down after 31 December 2008."

Chris also pointed out, correctly, that the embedded video "is not the finest piece of viewing technology". I agree that the quality isn't great - this is basically because the live feed that we use is quite low quality. However, at least it's still available online for people to watch - along with another 57,158 speeches from the past 18 months (at the last count).

It would be great if Parliament provided us with a high definition video feed, and someone else gave a big pot of cash to improve the user interface. Any takers? ;-)